What does it all mean??!!

Note: As the result of many people's requests to do so, I have made it so you no longer have to register at Blogger to post comments. It is my hope that this will encourage all my readers who until now had no voice to speak up. Comment your hearts out!



And this is why I love comments, a Quote from David's comment on my April 9th post:
"I think meaning is all completely relative. I no longer see a difference between cars, fashion, music, hair, architecture, nature, or watercolors. Clearly I enjoy different things for different amounts of time in different ways but I don't see a reason anymore why anything is more meaningful than anything else. It's all relative."

I think you would be hard pressed to find someone who doesn't think meaning is relative. Let me demonstrate. Take something that has meaning to you, anything, it doesn't matter what. Now, think back to last week. Did that thing have the same meaning to you then? How about last month? Last year? Chances are, the thing that means the most to you now had little or no meaning to you a very short time ago. I would say it's pretty relative.

What David's comment seems to be driving at is more a matter of subjectivity. I find a lot of meaning in music, art, and nature. Many of my friends, however, find much more meaning in cars, fashion, and fine dining. Am I wrong to care less about what car I drive or what clothes I'm wearing than I do about what music is playing on the stereo or what landscape I'm driving through? I don't think so, and I hope you don't either.

The thing is, we don't really have a scale on which to measure meaning. You can't make a device that calculates meaning for things. As it turns out, there are already about 7 billion devices running around out there experiencing things and attributing meaning to them. But as I said before, no 2 of these devices (people) will attribute the same meaning to the same thing. "It's all relative."

But if we don't have a scale, how is it possible for people to be associating meaning with all of this stuff? Well, we simply attribute meaning for new stuff in reference to all the other stuff we've already applied a meaning to. Meaning is our method of connecting all things in our universe. If you can imagine yourself isolated in an infinite universe with nothing in it but you and a car, how much meaning would that car have to you?

A question that comes to mind as I think about this is, what happens when part of our world disappears? When something that we have attributed a lot of meaning to suddenly blinks out of existence, what is the effect on our perception of meaning? Do other things suddenly gain meaning? Or perhaps they lose meaning because without this one thing, they were nothing. Does finding new meaning in something take away from the meaning of other things? I encourage you all to think about these questions and give me your thoughts.

David goes on to imply that it would be easy for people to look at a beautiful nature-scape and conclude that it has far more meaning than the trendy pair of shoes on a nearby spectator's feet. He then says: "I don't think either have any meaning and both can be appreciated." A difficult statement to contradict, however I don't think there is anything that doesn't have any meaning at all. Everything in this universe has some meaning to someone, but the fact that we can't readily identify what meaning and to whom does not mean we should discount it's validity entirely. I certainly think that all things can be appreciated in their own right, it's just a matter of changing your perspective.

I want to stress the subjectivity of meaning to all of you. Everyone reading this can think of one thing, quite possibly within arm's reach, that to anyone else would mean next to nothing, but to you it means the world. Nothing has no meaning. Should you ever run across something that has no meaning to you, first try to think if any of your friends would find meaning in it, then try to imagine a person who would find a lot of meaning in it (this person may be completely insane, but we don't judge, let them be happy with what little meaning they have), if that doesn't work, make something up. Or, it may be that you have found the one thing in this universe that no one could possibly find any meaning in at all, and to me, that means a lot :-D.

Leave comments children, I <3 comments!

Peace and love,
Geoff